Qualla: HMS Vortigern

HMS Vortigern: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy Official Photographer, Public domain. Just before two in the morning on 15 March 1942, the German motor torpedo boat S104 fired a torpedo into the side of HMS Vortigern as she screened a coastal convoy off Cromer. The destroyer was nearly twenty-five years old, a survivor of the First World War and the interwar years, called back into service in 1939. The torpedo struck and she went down quickly in the cold March sea. Of her ship's company of one hundred and twenty-four, only fourteen men were pulled from the water. One hundred and ten died. The Cromer lifeboat H F Bailey III recovered eleven bodies from the waves the next day. Twelve of the dead are buried at Lowestoft, one at Cromer, and the rest stayed with the ship on the seabed.

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Image: Royal Navy Official Photographer | Public domain

HMS Vortigern: Built for the Last War

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire), Public domain. Vortigern was ordered from J. Samuel White at Cowes on the Isle of Wight under the 1916-17 programme, when the Royal Navy was racing to replace destroyer losses from the First World War. Her keel was laid on 17 January 1917 and she was launched on 5 October 1917, commissioned 21 ...

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Image: Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) | Public domain

HMS Vortigern: Reserve and Recall

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy Official Photographer, Public domain. The years between the wars were lean for Royal Navy destroyers. Vortigern served briefly with the 1st Destroyer Flotilla, then was paid off into the reserve fleet. There she sat through the 1920s and 1930s, her crew of fitters and skeleton hands keeping the boilers warm and the m...

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Image: Royal Navy Official Photographer | Public domain

HMS Vortigern: Gibraltar, Mers-el-Kebir, and Home

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy Official Photographer, Public domain. In January 1940 Vortigern was nominated to the 13th Destroyer Flotilla at Gibraltar. For five months she ran convoys back and forth between Britain and the Rock. Then on 3 July she was present at Mers-el-Kebir, the painful operation against the French fleet at its Algerian anchor...

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Image: Royal Navy Official Photographer | Public domain

HMS Vortigern: The Last Convoy

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy Official Photographer, Public domain. On 9 December 1940, off Aldeburgh in Suffolk, a German seaplane attacked one of Vortigern's convoys. She fought it off. She continued running convoys up and down the east coast through 1941 and into 1942, a routine of cold, wet, dark watches in waters that the Kriegsmarine harass...

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Image: Royal Navy Official Photographer | Public domain

HMS Vortigern: A Protected Wreck

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy Official Photographer, Public domain. When dawn came, the Cromer lifeboat went out and found wreckage and bodies spread across the swells. The H F Bailey III, a 41-foot motor lifeboat that would itself become famous for wartime rescues, brought in eleven men who had died waiting. The fourteen survivors carried home w...

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Image: Royal Navy Official Photographer | Public domain